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Gen. Haig: CIA Seduced by Technology and Hobbled by Congress Wes Vernon, NewsMax.comWASHINGTON – Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida have been allies in terror, says a former secretary of state and supreme allied commander in Europe. That fact fully justifies President Bush’s decision to go to war against Iraq, says Gen. Alexander Haig, despite the “psychological issue of weapons of mass destruction.” “Think slam dunk,” he added, an obvious reference to outgoing CIA Director George Tenet, the Clinton holdover who had used that term in assuring President Bush such weapons would be found. Tenet announced his resignation shortly before Haig spoke at a luncheon Thursday. The analysis of intelligence worldwide was that Saddam had WMD. There have been reports the weapons have been moved elsewhere, possibly to Iran or Syria. The occasion of Haig’s remarks was a daylong seminar hosted by the Defense Intelligence Agency and honoring the late Gen. Vernon A. Walters. Walters, a 50-year military career officer, served as deputy director of the DIA. His other posts included ambassador-at-large; multilingual interpreter for several presidents; deputy director of the CIA; high-ranking aide to Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and G.H.W. Bush; recipient of the Career Intelligence Medal; recipient of the President’s Citizens Medal (from Reagan); recipient of the Medal of Freedom (from G.H.W. Bush). 'You Still Need Boots on the Ground'
Speaking to the DIA's Joint Military Intelligence College, Haig, who also worked closely with Walters, said the CIA “is still short of on-the-ground intelligence.” America’s military and intelligence capabilities have been compromised by an over-reliance on technology advances, he said. Even with these new innovations, the veteran soldier declared, “you still need boots on the ground.” America, in Haig’s view, is still paying the price for “30 years of mistake after mistake by both parties.” “The first President Bush and President Clinton passed the problem [of Saddam] to their successors,” he charged. “The last chapter is yet to be written” on the link between “Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and global terror itself.” Iraq under Hussein’s rule was “a major state supporter” of terrorists. President Bush knew war with Iraq was inevitable because its threat to the world was not resolved in the Gulf War years earlier. “9/11 just moved up the timetable.” Beyond the former Iraqi dictator’s aid and comfort to terrorists, his “flouting [of] the [U.N.] sanctions for more than a decade” made it necessary to take up arms to bring down his regime, Haig said. More troops were required “from day one” in the War on Terror, the man who was President Reagan’s first secretary of state told the audience. “We are a nation at war, but we haven’t mobilized for that conflict,” he said. Haig credited the late CIA Director William Casey with understanding the need for facing threats head-on, and Reagan for giving him the tools to meet them. And the former White House chief of staff under Presidents Nixon and Ford reminded his audience that the Soviet KGB “was the great father of modern terrorists.” Other analysts - J. Michael Waller and David Horowitz come to mind — have also made that Soviet connection to the worldwide terrorist menace that threatens us today.
Devastated by Congress The CIA, Haig believes, “was seduced” by technological advances because the press was fascinated by them, and because Congress put the intelligence agencies "out of the covert business.” Many have charged the Church and Pike committees’ sensationalist Capitol Hill hearings in the post-Watergate 1970s resulted in the downgrading of human intelligence, for which this nation is still paying the price. Some believe that culture led to a series of missteps ultimately leading to the terror attacks of 9/11. Jettisoning human intelligence was a “bad idea,” Haig believes — and “a populist con.” “Calling it a neo-con doesn’t make it any better,” he said, in a reference to neo-conservatives who have lurked around decision-making circles in parts of the Bush administration. Haig adamantly distances himself from that group. Granted, he said, some of the people that it was necessary to enlist for human “on-the-ground” intelligence were “the kind of people you didn’t want your mother to meet.” Others have used the analogy that if you’re going to infiltrate a group of rats, you need to recruit other rats. The fact that the other rats are not nice people doesn’t mean they can’t be useful informants who can enable us to save lives. Haig believes President Bush has a better sense of realism in the war than others are willing to grant him. He says that was reflected in the chief executive’s recent statement that his aim was “to make Iraqis free, not to make them Americans.” Anti-American 'Community' Another “bad idea,” as the general sees it, is that “multilateralism” for its own sake is inherently beneficial. Without making a reference to Sen. John Kerry’s vow to “involve the international community” in the war with Iraq and against terrorism, Haig said beneath what passes for multilateralism often lies a thinly disguised “anti-Americanism.” Many of those who preach multilateralism of this sort, he said, “are the linear descendents of those who opposed U.S. leadership in the Cold War.” They “were wrong then, and they’re wrong now,” he charged. Getting NATO more involved in “a multilateral Atlantic alliance, not the U.N.,” would be more effective, Haig believes. NATO, in fact, could “coordinate the war on terrorism.” “We are in a war for civilization,” the veteran statesman told his audience at a luncheon at the Officers Club at Bolling Air Force Base, our own civilization and that of "those who share our values."
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